


The Space Between Them

by whichstiel



Series: Season 14 Codas [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunkers, Death Headcanon, Episode Tag, Episode: s14e10 Nihilism, M/M, Nihilism, Snuggling, episode coda, spn 14x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Exhaustion clung to him like a smothering film. “Cas, I—” Dean closed his eyes and arranged his thoughts. “What if when I sleep he—”Understanding passed like a shadow over Castiel’s features and he nodded slowly. “I could watch over you.” He said the lines simply, without expectation. His eyes never left Dean.





	The Space Between Them

**I. Castiel**

**__**_They’re like birds_ , Castiel thought as he settled into his chair and surveyed Dean and Sam across the table. _They’re birds in a field of thorn bushes, picking up barbs from the ground and using them to line their nests._ The war room was silent. Maggie and the rest of the surviving hunters who defended the bunker had all retired to fitful sleep. Castiel saw Jack off to sleep personally, trying to shut away the rising worry about the state of Jack’s grace and most importantly, his soul. Horror crept like a clammy hand through his gut. When it came to avoiding stupid risks, he and the Winchesters were terrible role models. 

They sat quietly, an opened beer in front of each of them dripping slow condensation in shivering rings. The silence was broken only by the clink of bottles against the table. The cuffs that had bound Michael lay to the side, jumbled in a heap next to the wires and electrodes they’d stripped off in their rush to see to the bloodied and broken bodies strewn across the floor when they’d woken.

Dean reached for the glass sitting alongside his untouched beer and took a long swallow of vodka-clear tap water. Every minute or two the skin at the corner of one eye would crease, like a flinch. Then his eye would widen again to a dull glare directed at the table and he’d take another drink. The glass clacked against the table loud as a gunshot as he set it back down. 

“Can you…hear him?” 

Dean’s sour smile was answer enough. He shrugged. “It’s fine.” Looking up and meeting Castiel’s eye he said, “I can handle it.”

“If there’s anything we can do—” Sam started before shaking his head. “We’re gonna fix this, Dean.”

“Yeah. ‘Course we are.” Dean’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Listen, guys. About what…what Michael said. You know that’s not how I—”

“Michael trades in lies and manipulation.” Castiel reached across the space between them and closed his fingers over Dean’s forearm. Under his hand, Dean felt strung as tight as a bow. “We aren’t giving it a second thought.” That, of course, was a blatant lie. Sam wore a haunted look with a higher concentration of guilt than could possibly be healthy. Castiel could relate to the feeling. 

Michael had sneered at all of them - Jack, Sam, and himself - accusing them of being burdens to Dean. And the infuriating thing was, that was entirely true. Castiel could write several volumes on the destruction he’d caused in Heaven and on Earth. He could write essays on the agony he’d brought to Dean, personally. In the beginning his role had seemed clear: protector, warrior. Now, everything felt muddied. Confusing. 

Castiel tightened his grip on Dean’s arm and fought back a sigh. He had more than enough briars to build a kingdom all on his own. It was so easy to fall into a tangle of self-loathing. Michael’s remarks needled at him, pressing into his every thought like an insistent beast might sink its teeth into his flesh - slowly, and with a cheerless grin. 

“You both should get some rest,” Castiel suggested gently as he watched Sam heroically try and fail to stifle a yawn. Sam grimaced in agreement, but his gaze flicked to Dean, wide with worry. He caught Castiel's eye, one brow slightly upraised. Castiel nodded, almost imperceptibly. Where Dean was unlikely to follow Sam’s suggestion, Castiel might be able to bully or coax him to get some rest. 

Sam cleared his throat and pushed his half empty beer away, leaving a comet-streak of water behind. “I’m beat, man,” he said. “I’m gonna get some sleep.” He rapped his knuckles twice on the table. “Come on. You should try for a couple hours, at least. We’ll tackle this in the morning.”

“Sam’s right,” Castiel said immediately, watching Dean stare with empty eyes at his tumbler of water. “You should rest.”

After far too long of an interval, Dean shrugged. “Sure. Okay.” He pushed away from the table, making a show of picking up the bottles and shuttling them into the crook of his elbow. Castiel grabbed his own drink and, standing up, trailed Dean to the kitchen like a watchful shepherd.

**II. Dean**

Everything seemed dim and colorless. The bunker, industrially lit at nearly all times, seemed like a flat, two dimensional expanse of meaningless shapes. Dean walked to the kitchen, making a special effort to set his feet carefully, one in front of the other, and not stumble. _Step. Another. Another. Everything’s fine._

At the kitchen sink he looked at the glass of water, still with an inch or so of drink left in it. The water had tasted gray, like it was full of too many minerals to discern any specific flavor. He wondered if this is what Castiel felt when he tasted food under the influence of grace. 

Castiel walked behind him, a silent shadow. Part of Dean rankled at it. The urge to whirl and scream at Castiel to go away - to leave him in peace - hunkered like bile in his gut, clamoring to rise. 

Dean pour the water down the sink, rinsed out the glass, and set it in the dish drainer. Silently, Castiel emptied the beers into the sink as well and then discarded the bottles. He leaned on the counter and looked at Dean, his brow creased with silent expectation. With a sigh, Dean shoved his hands into his pockets and regarded him. Michael shrieked and raged, a constant backdrop. Dean narrowed his eyes to focus on Castiel and tried for a smile. “Well.”

“Dean, you should really try to get some rest.” 

Dean stared at the metal countertop and wondered if he could make it buckle with just his fist. He imagined for a moment a symphony of crumpling metal curling around his knuckles. Rage billowed in his chest like a filling balloon and it was only with great effort that he made it subside. “Ain’t tired.” Castiel lowered his chin and arched his brow. “And don’t give me that look.”

“Please,” Castiel said quietly. “You need to keep up your strength. With Michael contained, the effects of his grace will be diminished.” 

_Not enough,_ Dean thought, remembering the too-much taste of the water. But what Castiel said was true. Exhaustion clung to him like a smothering film. “Cas, I—” Dean closed his eyes and arranged his thoughts. “What if when I sleep he—”

Understanding passed like a shadow over Castiel’s features and he nodded slowly. “I could watch over you, and wake you if I sense him rising.” He said the lines simply, without expectation. His eyes never left Dean.

“Okay,” Dean found himself nodding before he fully processed his agreement. Relief trickled down his neck like a cool compress. “Let’s try that.”

They walked to Dean’s room without a word shared between them. Even a few hours of Michael’s violent occupation was enough to make Dean feel shredded and utterly tired of words. He focused instead on Castiel’s steady inhale and exhale. The sound of his coat shushing as he walked. The warmth that emanated from his body. 

Dean opened the heavy door to his room and then clung to it with one hand while, with the other, he wrenched off his boots. He still wore his jeans and shirt like armor against Michael or monsters. His socks had little cartoon ghosts on them, incongruously cheerful considering the events of the day. Dean sat on the bed and then swung his legs up, stretching out across the bed cover. 

Castiel picked up his chair and moved it close to the side of Dean’s bed, carrying it carefully so that it would not scrape against the floor or other furniture. He had seemed to pick up on Dean’s new sensitivity to sound. _Maybe,_ Dean thought as he fought against sleep, _noise bothers him all the damn time._

Castiel settled quietly in the chair and reached across Dean’s pillow to gently cup his hand around the crown of Dean’s head. “Are you ready?” he asked. 

Dean nodded and closed his eyes, feeling Castiel enter his mind like a cool breeze curling around a hot room. He sighed at the familiar touch of Castiel’s mind. He hadn’t realized until it happened how good - how safe he would feel with Castiel walking the halls of his memories. 

Castiel was there now. He would keep watch over the door in Dean’s mind and wake him if Michael tried anything. Dean willed himself to settle in and sleep but…

“Cas?” Dean finally said - aloud or in his head, he couldn’t be quite sure. “Can you?” The image rose in his mind like a neon sign and he heard Castiel’s sharp inhale and felt his surprise like a ricocheting dart. 

“Of course.” Carefully, Castiel pushed out of the chair. Dean kept his eyes shut, feeling instead the way the mattress dipped as Castiel eased his weight onto it. He stretched out alongside Dean, long and warm. His hand rotated from the top of Dean’s head to the side, so his thumb brushed along his temple and his palm cupped his ear. Gently, Castiel settled the weight of his arm on Dean like a shield. _Get some rest._ Part command and part plea, Castiel’s words settled in Dean’s mind. Dean sighed and relaxed into the touch as Castiel whispered like a blanket across the cold expanse of his memories.

Dean slept. 

**III. Billie**

Billie stalked the library stacks, pulling books of fate at random from the shelves and flipping through them to see if they had changed from her intervention with the Winchesters. She scowled at the pages. Billie couldn’t say for sure whether she was pleased or displeased to find that her intervention hadn’t seemed to change a single book. 

Every single book spelled out death rained down by Michael as he passed from reality to reality. The fate had spread like a creeping plague in the library, at first confined to a handful of realities where Michael had seized control. The spread had been slow, at first. But after a certain point, it had seemed to be an inevitable disease swallowing all of creation. Billie might be death incarnate these days, but that had only strengthened her love for life across the worlds. She would see it protected by any means - even if it meant saving a Winchester. 

She lingered in the Winchester shelves and pulled volumes down, searching for the minor fates that once appeared: a wendigo, a ghost, a fearful police officer. _Michael_ , they read now. _Michael. Michael. Michael._ All except one book which, when Billie had first read it, had seemed like a laughably complex way to die. 

_Dean Winchester hosts the archangel Michael from world 83873543 but maintains control. He recalls the archangel Lucifer from where he slumbers in the Empty and arms him with an archangel blade. Lucifer kills Michael, Dean kills Lucifer, and Dean Winchester dies._

She’d seen the direction of fate before Dean’s latest visit, when he’d been catapulting himself towards death with open arms after the loss of Castiel. It had killed her to think he might be the key to stopping the Michael plague. But she’d sent him back to the world then, and she’d save him now. “Stop Michael,” she said as though her words could reach through the book and speak to Dean himself. 

On the Earth hosting the Dean Winchester who might save all of creation, there was quiet in a small room inside an old bunker. Castiel and Dean lay wrapped in and around each other with no space between them, nestled in a knot of pain and love so firmly wrought as to be almost tangible. 

“Stories are changeable until they end,” Billie murmured as she traced a careful finger along the lines of the shelves. In the leminiscate library outside of time, death was just a pin on a map, and no story ever really ended. She would check the books and deploy her reapers and they would weave golden threads of fate into a fine tapestry and spread it over the world, protecting it. When she had been a simple reaper, she’d scoffed to her compatriots. “Nobody loves the world more than Death,” she’d said. Back then, it had been an insult. Now, she understood it as a calling deeper and more complex than she could possibly describe. She was a single mushroom sprouting from the deep mycorrhizae of the cosmos and she would fight for it. She would fight for it all with every weapon in her arsenal. Even if that arsenal included a pair of Winchesters and a lonely angel. Life was a garden spreading color throughout the Emptiness beyond. She would not stand idly by and watch it shrivel to gray.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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